Following a fourth straight loss to the Michigan Wolverines, Ohio State Buckeyes fans have begun calling for Ryan Day’s job as the head coach. Is his job security now tied to a national title win?
Ryan Day on Hot Seat After Another Loss to Michigan?
Since taking over as Ohio State’s full-time head coach in 2019 (he led the team for the first three games in 2018 with Urban Meyer suspended), Day has a remarkable 66-10 record. Even more impressive is that nine of those losses were to AP-ranked teams, nearly half of whom were in the top three.
His 67.8% winning percentage (19-9 overall record) against top-25 teams ranks third among active head coaches, behind only the Georgia Bulldogs’ Kirby Smart and the Alabama Crimson Tide’s Kalen DeBoer.
However, Day’s Buckeyes have fallen short in several high-profile moments, perhaps none more than Nov. 30’s 13-10 loss to the unranked Wolverines.
While Nick Saban’s unprecedented success has altered fan expectations in an unhealthy way, Buckeyes fans have a right to be frustrated with Day’s performance in Columbus.
Ohio State is favored to win most of its games simply because of its inherent talent advantage over most schools in the nation. Thus, Day can’t just get by winning the games he’s expected to — he has to win the pivotal matchups as well. History has proven he loses those more than he wins.
The higher up the AP Poll Top 25 you go, the worse Day’s record becomes. Against top-10 opponents, he’s 10-8, picking up a pair of such victories recently against the No. 3 Penn State Nittany Lions and No. 5 Indiana Hoosiers.
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That said, Penn State’s James Franklin has his own issues winning big games, and Curt Cignetti is just getting started at Indiana with a roster filled with Group of Five transfers.
Prior to the victory over the Hoosiers, the last time the Buckeyes knocked off a team in the top five was Week 1 of the 2022 season, when they defeated the No. 5 Notre Dame Fighting Irish 21-10 as a ranked (No. 2) home team. And before that, Day’s only other top-five win came against the No. 2 Clemson Tigers in the first round of the 2020 College Football Playoff.
Ohio State beat the breaks off Dabo Swinney’s squad, 49-28, but were swiftly dispatched in the national championship by Saban’s Alabama Crimson Tide, 52-24.
Day is 2-0 in Big Ten title games, but those came in 2019 and 2020. The Buckeyes haven’t made it back since, and the conference’s abolishing of divisions in 2024 was supposed to make their path easier. Instead, they fell to conference newcomer Oregon and then to Michigan, effectively eliminating them from title contention.
That leaves the College Football Playoff, where Day has a 1-3 record. After a Deshaun Watson-led Clemson team obliterated Urban Meyer and Co. in the first round of 2017’s bracket, 31-0, it took a few years and a pandemic for the program to return to the dance.
They did so just to fall to Clemson in the first round once again (29-23). Day’s squad got revenge in 2021 before Alabama put them back in their place in the title bout. Tyreke Johnson, a CB on the roster at the time, called back to that game following the loss to Michigan, citing Day’s inability to rally the roster at halftime.
Y’all can say I’m hating or whatever y’all want but. I knew coach Day was not the answer when we played in the national championship against Bama and at half time he didn’t say a word to the team just went in the office and started to blame other coaches.
— tyreke johnson (@Im_showtime_) November 30, 2024
After a year off, the Buckeyes gave their all against the No. 1 Georgia Bulldogs in 2022 but fell short by just one point (42-41).
The 45-year-old HC hasn’t performed up to par in The Game, either, dropping the last four — the first time Ohio State has lost four straight meetings against Michigan since 1988-91. With Jim Harbaugh, several coaches, and a handful of starters leaving the Wolverines this offseason, they limped to a 6-5 schedule entering Rivalry Week.
As a result, the Buckeyes were 20-point home favorites. Instead of covering the near three-touchdown spread or even just winning outright, OSU fell 13-10 in one of the more embarrassing losses in recent memory.
QB Will Howard threw two costly interceptions, and kicker Jayden Fielding missed two field goals, causing the offense to go 2 of 5 in the red zone. To make matters worse, Michigan was without two of its star players in TE Colston Loveland and CB Will Johnson.
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Ohio State is now 10-2, out of the Big Ten Championship (unless both Penn State and Indiana lose), and down on its luck entering Selection Sunday, when it’ll find out their first-round opponent.
And for those wondering, Day’s buyout is roughly $37 million — the second-largest amount in the country behind only Georgia’s Kirby Smart.
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